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Chasing two hares at once? Effect of joint institutional change for promoting commercial use of university knowledge and scientific research

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Abstract

Stimulating the university’s scientific research while encouraging the commercial use of the resulting knowledge is one of the foremost missions to science policymakers. This study examines the short-term impact of joint institutional changes for facilitating the commercial use of university knowledge and stimulating scientific research activities by introducing a research performance evaluation system on the university scientists’ research outcomes. Our empirical analysis is based on Japan’s national university reform in 2004, which introduced institutional measures to support the income-generating activities of academic staff while implementing a regular evaluation of their performance. Using data on over 5,000 scientists in Japan’s national and private universities, we find an increase in the research productivity among national university scientists without a significant change in their research quality by this institutional change. Moreover, we find evidence showing that the reform induced more scientists to engage in research that serves as a knowledge input for developing technological applications. These short-term effects are specific to the scientists in the Life Science domain and those who were inactive in developing technical applications before the reform. We discuss the contributions of the present study to the strain of literature on how an institutional change to encourage commercial use of university knowledge affects science and draw the implications for science policy therein.

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Notes

  1. Here, academic staffs refer to faculty (Professors, Associate professor or Lecturer, and Assistant professor) and researchers with non-faculty appointments.

  2. See Statement on the research excellence framework proposal by University and College Union (2011). Available at https://www.ucu.org.uk/media/3600/Statement-on-the-Research-Excellence-Framework-proposals/pdf/ucu_REFstatement_finalsignatures.pdf.

  3. MEXT of Japan established a new framework for financially assisting private universities in 2013 (Yamada, 2018). Although this policy change was specific to the private universities, it occurred in 2013, which is out of the period of analysis of the present research (2000 to 2008).

  4. The research papers published by the university scientists in our sample are limited to those published in SCI(E) journals. Hence, the research areas of scientists in our data exclude Social Sciences or Arts & Humanities. https://images.webofknowledge.com/images/help/WOS/hp_research_areas_easca.html.

  5. For robustness check, we also tested whether the maximum value of the paper age-normalized citation has changed after the reform. Our analysis finds no evidence on the change in the citation impact.

  6. See Sect. 4.4 for the details of field categorization and scientists grouping.

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Acknowledgements

This study is conducted as a part of the Project “Digitalization and Innovation Ecosystem: Holistic Approach” undertaken at the Research Institute of Economy, Trade, and Industry (RIETI). The authors would like to thank Professor Nagaoka and RIETI discussion paper seminar participants for their helpful comments. The authors also acknowledge support from JSPS KAKENHI (Grant Number JP18H03631).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Research Center for Advanced Science and Technology, The University of Tokyo, Tokyo, Japan

    Seokbeom Kwon & Kazuyuki Motohashi

  2. Department of Technology Management for Innovation, The University of Tokyo, Tokyo, Japan

    Seokbeom Kwon & Kazuyuki Motohashi

  3. Research Institute of Economy, Trade, and Industry (RIETI), Tokyo, Japan

    Kazuyuki Motohashi & Kenta Ikeuchi

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  1. Seokbeom Kwon
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  2. Kazuyuki Motohashi
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Kwon, S., Motohashi, K. & Ikeuchi, K. Chasing two hares at once? Effect of joint institutional change for promoting commercial use of university knowledge and scientific research. J Technol Transf 47, 1242–1272 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10961-021-09876-z

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